Fray: Ashes
by BenMused
Summary: Based on Joss Whedon's comic Fray. Four weeks after the battle in which both Melaka and Erin nearly lost their lives, both have returned to their daily lives. However will Erin's decision to help her sister hunt, place them both in danger? [Chapter 1 up]


**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of the aspects of _Fray_, or the Buffyverse. Those all belong to Joss. I just borrow them for awhile to write about them. Don't worry, he gets them back in more or less the same condition he lent them out to me.

**Author's Note: **So, first chapter. New beginnings. It's exciting for me. I haven't written anything really creative in a long while, so I hope I still remember how to do it correctly. And I guess _Fray _fanfics aren't so common, but I really felt compelled to finish her story, since it doesn't seem like Joss is ever going to get around to it himself. Let me know what you all think, constructive criticism is always welcome. Also, as an FYI, I'm calling this "Book 2," because I'm counting the comic series as an actual book.

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**Fray**

_Book 2: Ashes_

**CHAPTER ONE: ON THE HUNT**

_"Great. I'm covered in dead people and now I have to find my own way home."_

Melaka Fray had been having another bad day. Truth be told, it was more like a bad four weeks. Ever since she had been told by Urkonn that she was the "Slayer," with the big predestined future panning out before her, Melaka had been forced to deal with the burden of nursing fresh bruises and fighting for her life on a nightly basis. Yes, things had been bad. But than again, everyone knew Melaka thrived on the bad. Tonight was no exception.

"Ah!" Mel grunted as she was slammed backwards, and nearly lost her footing atop the building. It wouldn't have been the first time, or even the second time that she'd been knocked off of a skyscraper, but even as experienced with the extreme sport of skyscraper-diving as she was, Mel was not in the mood for a free-fall tonight. Instead, she steadied herself again, and raised both hands in the air. "I see. This is how it's gonna go, is it?" She asked the group of Lurks that had begun to surround her. "Fine then. But you're going to have to work for your dinner."

And with that, the battle began anew. The first Lurk, a burly and scarred looking shirtless man rushed towards her, and Mel instinctively tensed her body. Kneeling down briefly, she kicked upwards and flew through the air with little effort, her body twisting and soaring though the night sky. The Lurk, that had rushed her barely had time to react, or attempt to stop his propulsion before his body suddenly flipped off the edge of the rooftop, and into the sky. Mel didn't waste precious energy trying to glimpse the creature's descent, but instead allowed her body to naturally spin over the group of Lurks, and land gently behind them.

Her knees buckling upon impact, Mel used her own force to her advantage, and ducked into a roll, away from the group of growling Lurks that were already spinning to advance on her anew.

Mel took a moment to sift through her options. She could see the doorway leading to the staircase in front of her. She was sure she could make it out if she ran fast enough. But no, she couldn't leave her scythe behind. A Lurk had kicked it out of her grip near the beginning of the fight and if she just abandoned it now, she would be left completely defenseless in any battles in the future. Besides, there was probably some sort of ancient Slayer-law she didn't know about that probably would curse her with all sorts of badness if she left it behind. _'Although, how much worse can things possibly get?' _she wondered. _'I'm trapped on a rooftop, without my weapon, and I'm outnumbered.' _If it had been a job for Gunther, or fleeing from the police, she may have even liked her odds. But tonight was different. Knowing that her birthright threatened to end her life each each and every night that she went hunting, made the danger seem that much more real for her.

A growl from an approaching Lurk suddenly snapped her out of her thoughts, and all her plans seemed to fly out the window as she reacted solely on instinct. Using her hands to support her, Mel kicked upwards with both legs, supporting her weight as the side of her right boot connected with the face of a female Lurk, causing the bone to crush with a sickening dull thunk. Leaning into the roll, Mel spun onto her feet and turned to face her attackers.

An veritable cornucopia of fangs, bumpy eyebrows, and skin in desperate need of a tan glared back at her. The five relatively unharmed Lurks—Vampires—stepped over their wounded comrade, leaving her to howl and clutch at her bloodied face as they moved towards Mel.

Stepping backwards, towards the doorway, Mel made sidelong glances at the ground around her for her scythe. "Looking for this?" A burly, ponytail wearing male Lurk asked, as he scooped her scythe up off of the ground. "Pretty intimidating weapon..." He mused, stepping away from the rest of the pack, who more than content to let him handle the kill now that he had a weapon. "Although, I daresay it's probably more intimidating from your point of view." He chuckled, causing the rest of his buddies to burst into laughter. "Now, which end would you like me to kill you with?"

"You don't want to touch that." Mel warned him.

"Who's going to stop me?" He asked, when suddenly, a blinding flash of blue colored lightning shot through the air from the sky, and enveloped his body. Roaring with pain from the stun, the Lurk managed to hold onto the scythe for a brief moment, before it fell from his hand. Diving forward, Mel caught the weapon by it's handle, and swung out in a wide arch, lopping off the Lurk's head in one deft movement.

"My sister is," Mel responded to his question, waving her thanks upwards at the police bike that Erin sat on, stun gun in hand.

The beheaded Lurk's body dusted as it fell, a cloud of dust rising and filling the electrically charged air. Her courage renewed, Mel changed her grip on the scythe, turning the bottom end towards the rest of her attackers. Plowing through the dust, Mel impaled the closest Lurk on her stake, and could feel his stance and muscles immediately begin to deteriorate as his body turned to dust, skin and muscle flaking off into a find cloud of powder. Mel didn't waste time celebrating the small victory. Instead, she used the rage and confusion felt by the remaining Lurk's to her own advantage. Pulling the scythe backwards abruptly, she slammed her elbow into the face of she instinctively knew was approaching behind her. Spinning the weapon around suddenly, she sliced through the air with the blade of the scythe, and severed an arm that had suddenly grasped her shoulder.

The sudden onslaught had served its purpose, to shake up and disorient the remaining Lurks. Instead of working together as a cohesive group, each demon was acting of its own accord—following that desire to taste her blood, and make her pay for the things she'd done. It was exactly what she had hoped would happen. They were far more imposing when they had been coming at her as a group. _'When will they ever learn?' _Mel asked herself as she charged forward and through the crowd of her attackers.

Erin watched the scene from her police bike with the same look of amazement that seemed so regularly pasted across her visage since she had realized just how strong her sister actually was. She had always known Mel to be strong-_willed_, but this physical strength and ingenuity she witnessed her use on a nightly basis ever since she had started joining her on her hunts, never failed to surprise her. Still, she held her stun gun at the ready with her left hand, as she hovered above the building and surveyed the battle. She watched as Mel plunged the stake through the back of the Lurk that had been kicked in the face earlier, and used the temporary ground the weapon was stuck in, to spin herself back towards her attackers. As the body collapsed into nothingness, the weapon was pulled free and easily maneuvered to allow Mel to stake another foe. A smile spread across Erin's lips as the remaining Lurks' courage began to falter. Each stumbled backwards and away from her, one leaping from the rooftop, as the other two began scrambling to get past each other and to the stairwell.

Erin's eyes turned away from the battle. She watched for a moment as the falling Lurk began to slip out of sight, tumbling downwards, past cars that honked their horns and slammed on their air-brakes as they tried to avoid any sort of impact with the falling creature. A sudden bout of courage seemed to come over Erin, causing her to pocket her weapon as she spun her police bike away from the battle, and aimed it downwards.

She followed in hot pursuit, her training as an officer of the force helping her dodge other cars, and avoid what could have been a myriad of potentially messy situations. It was dangerous, yes, but Erin justified her actions to herself by blaming her sister. They had always been competitive with each other, and ever since the doc had fixed her wrist, Erin had been itching to get out there and see more of this side of the world she hardly had known existed.

"It's funny." Erin remembered saying to her sister from her hospital bed, as she lay there, cradling her broken wrist against her stomach as her sister lay beside her. "A few days ago, before all this, I thought I was helping people."

Up until that point, Mel had been still at her side, weeping silently. She hadn't blamed her when she first saw her cry that night after the battle. Erin already shed her own tears; her dead brother had tried to murder her, she had seen her sister be eaten by a gigantic monster, and just when she'd returned to her, both were nearly killed by said gigantic monster almost crushing them to death. It was enough to make even the strongest person cry. They had both seen friends die. The events of the last few days had wracked their nerves and wiped them both of nearly all the energy their bodies were able to house.

But it was Erin's words at the time that had perked her sister up again. Wiping tears from her eyes, Mel sat up on the bed and looked at her sister with the same sort of cold acknowledgment Erin had been used to seeing from her. "What do you mean you haven't been helping people?" Melaka asked, her brows furrowing as she posed the question. "Because from my vantage point—even though you do ride me way harder than you need to at times—being on the police force, you are helping people. Every day." Mel pointed out. "See the logic?"

"Right, I know. I help put scum in jail every day, yes," Erin started as she moved to sit up a bit straighter in the bed, wincing as her arm rocked against her body momentarily. "But now I find out there's this whole other world out there in the night I couldn't even begin to dream of. I wondered if you had gone crazy when you first told me." Erin admitted, and smiled as she noticed a look of disdain come across her sister's features. "I mean come on, Vampires? _Slayer? _It sounded like a bunch of fairytale stories to me. But seeing it all for myself was something else entirely... Seeing _you_ was something else."

"Jesu," Mel groaned, looking away and sliding off of the bed. "You know I'm not one for the cheesy, family-bonding sessions, so can we just skip this part?"

Erin chuckled, and looked down at her wounded arm in her lap. "I want to help you." She said, causing Mel to turn back towards her, with a look of absolute determination against the idea plastered on her face. "As soon as they patch me up, I'm out there with you."

A smile lingered on Erin's lips as she continued her descent downwards through the sky, remembering how her sister had argued with her after she had declared that she was going to help her fight. Mel had shouted that it wasn't her duty, and it was something she should stay out of, but Erin had refused to listen. "My mind is made up." She had said, and that was that. It went against every principle she had learned as a cadet in training, working with a known criminal the way she was. She had become a vigilante of sorts, working her own agenda outside the law. It was wrong in every sense of the word, and if her commanding officer ever found out, she would probably have more to worry about than just being kicked off the force, but it was something she felt she had to do.

Kneeling down, Erin tightened her grip on the handlebars and squeezed the lever underneath her fingers for an extra burst of speed. Her bike zipped through the air towards the rapidly approaching ground. For any other vehicle—and perhaps any other person—attempting a move like that would have probably led to a very gory death, but for Erin, who was used to chasing known criminals through the skies on a daily basis, it was a breeze. She was a good hundred feet off from the ground before she finally began to let up on the gas, and ease on her brakes as she pulled out of her steep descent. She could see the Lurk on the ground below her, lying dazed and bleeding, his limbs splayed at disgusting angles that didn't occur naturally in a humans body. _"Not human." _She reminded herself, a sudden flash of Harth standing over her as he snapped her wrist without a thought flashed through her mind, and she winced.

A good half dozen feet away from the Lurk, Erin came to a stop, her bike idling enough to swirl dust off of the ground. Turning off the machine, she hopped down and retrieved her gun from inside her jacket before approaching the unconscious creature.

Erin glanced around her quickly as she approached, looking out for the first Lurk that Mel had tossed off the building. He was nowhere to be seen. _"That's the thing about these buggers." _Erin growled to herself. _"They've got stamina I've never seen before." _And it was no exaggeration. She'd seen people pumped up on all sorts of substances, but none of them ever bounced back as quickly as the Lurks could. And it came as no surprise to her her when she noticed the Lurk on the ground before her begin to shift, and groan at the seriousness of his wounds. "Move and you're fried." She said, squeezing the trigger of her gun just enough that the mechanism inside began to to hum. "Now, I know these things won't kill you, but on their highest settings they can make attempting to live any semblance of a normal life after a jolt a literal pain. You're going to listen to the things I have to say, and you're going to tell me what I want to know and maybe I won't have my sister kill you afterwards."

"Great," Mel grumbled to herself as she brushed the dust of the two Lurks she had finally managed to slay off of her jacket. "I'm covered in dead people, and now I have to find my own way home." She said, wrinkling her nose in dismay. She definitely hadn't been expecting to see Erin suddenly zip away from the battle the way she had. She was supposed to be her ride home after all! _"Probably trying to be a hero." _Mel rolled her eyes. Ever since this whole Slayer deal landed in her lap, Erin had been jealous, she could tell. When Erin had told her that she wanted to help her with her hunting, Mel had been firmly set against the idea. She knew that Erin could handle herself, yes. She had seen her ability to keep her cool under pressure firsthand. But this situation was different. Urkonn had made it clear that it was a burden to be shared alone, always had been. Erin didn't seem to get it.

By the time Mel had found the way to the elevator again, her adrenaline was beginning to wear off. That regular high she felt after battling was beginning to fade away, and allowed her to think more clearly. However, along with the clarity of thought came Mel's worry for Erin, and realization the elevator music was, and probably always would be, the worst music in the history of the world. She pressed the buttons inside the elevator hurriedly, hoping that in some way, it might speed up the process. Erin wasn't equipped to take on Lurks. She only had a gun. That wasn't going to do the trick.

"Come on, come on," Mel whispered, watching the numbers on the screen above the elevator slowly decline, until she finally reached the first floor. The doors had hardly opened, before Mel was sliding out and hurrying down the lobby to the doors.

Once outside, Mel forced herself to calm down a bit as she scanned the surrounding streets. _"Erin's a grown woman," s_he thought. _"She's probably handling herself fine. She's seen and been through worse." _She had just finished telling herself, when a shrill scream cut through the air, and Melaka Fray's chest tightened in fear.

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**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **Well, there it is. The first chapter. I hope you all like it. Please review and let me know what you think:) 


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